Do we want the AI to be human or do the AIs want to be human? What if they go more crazy the more we try to make them human?

Is the writer trying to create a story that sells or to create what he likes or to imagine what he thinks may happen in the future or some combination of those three?

If the AI is software then how powerful does the hardware have to be? Can the software move or copy itself to any sufficiently powerful hardware? If it sends out copies and they can all communicate at light speed will the copies be any different? Will it just become one giant hive entity.

Why would it be hostile? What if it is totally indifferent to us? Is the Frankenstein AI just paranoia on our part or just what unimaginative authors think will sell? And maybe it does sell but has nothing to do with what may actually happen.

I don't know of anything better than Hogan's The Two Faces of Tomorrow and the only thing as good is The Adolescence of P-1.

In fact it is really annoying for this robot to say thank you for logging in. We know it can't really care. LOL

Been thinking about steampunk lately (it'll probably be my Halloween costume theme), and wondering how robots fit into a steampunk world. In a lot of ways, robots exemplify steampunk... the clockwork human. There have been plenty of examples of steampunk-style robots, in varying states of intelligence, but usually very primitive in form... often just a mobile voice-box that handles simple tasks. Steampunk robots seem to be relegated to simple servants, not likely sentient.

Then, there are robots like Robby (Forbidden Planet): Incredible intelligent, potentially sentient, but also physically primitive --and by the way, very steampunk in form, but a more streamlined steampunk in that the "gears" and "motors" were hidden under the skin. These were almost a throwback from the first movie robot, Parody (Metropolis), a mobile art-deco sculpture... though to be fair, crudely-constructed robots probably had more to do with movie budgets and the desire to achieve a clear and slightly menacing "mechanical man" look for sci-fi audiences.

One book I read had the premise that AI's/Robots thought so much faster than humans that it was like asking a question and waiting for a day or a week for a reply. Their true real-time communication was only with each other.

I had a very interesting discussing with a mechanical engineer about robots.

He said something very true. A robot can be made with an assortment of looks. They are also designed for a purpose. The purpose should correspond with their look. Robots can also be designed to exceed humans with mobility and form. So, why build a robot to resemble a human?

He did like my reasoning that robots will undoubtedly be built to look, talk, and mimic humans to send into deep space for the event of discovery of nonhuman species to have an idea of what humans look like, sound like, and act like just out of human vanity.

Terminator 3 had some good moments, as badly made as it was. The terminators mobility to turn around a full 360 degrees was interesting. Humans don't have that type of mobility.

Also, in Battlestar Galactica, the Cylon leader confronting one of the cylon creators with question was also interesting. He ask her why must the cylons with human bodies be limited with mere human senses with human ranges when they can be so much more.

There is also the idea of robots of the future being composed of countless micro nanobots that can repair the host and build any type of artificial life.

One book I read had the premise that AI's/Robots thought so much faster than humans that it was like asking a question and waiting for a day or a week for a reply. Their true real-time communication was only with each other.

Sounds familiar! And don't forget: For the robot, just asking the question would take as long to their thought processes. Imagine taking a week to ask a question.

But this line of thought suggests the capacity for patience/impatience in a robot, or any machine. I wonder if the capacity is there at all... it would be a great question to ask a computer.

I had a very interesting discussing with a mechanical engineer about robots.

He said something very true. A robot can be made with an assortment of looks. They are also designed for a purpose. The purpose should correspond with their look. Robots can also be designed to exceed humans with mobility and form. So, why build a robot to resemble a human?

One reason: If the robot has to interact with humans, being human-like could allow the robot to apply many of the physical cues that go along with verbal communication, and make it easier to be fully understood in a conversation (as the internet has so well demonstrated, lack of those visual cues can create very wrong assessments of another's intent).

Originally Posted by Modern Day Myth

He did like my reasoning that robots will undoubtedly be built to look, talk, and mimic humans to send into deep space for the event of discovery of nonhuman species to have an idea of what humans look like, sound like, and act like just out of human vanity.

Myself, I'm not sure how practical that is... especially when the robot can bring (or hopefully fabricate as required, from memory) models and samples of humans and other Earth creatures to show to an extraterrestrial species. I think the human vanity of creating robots in our image will actually be a short-lived phenomenon... in fact, it's something we don't do in serious industrial applications, so why change now?

For the same reason why there are animatronic museums of dinosaurs in different parts of the USA, for a species to better understand a species they have never seen before.

One of the reasons animatronic museums are practical is: They don't go anywhere. They aren't required to travel long and hazardous journeys to get to the point where maybe they will find something to present their cargo. It would be enough of an effort to just send a probe optimized for the trip; not until we have energy to burn in sending probes those kind of distances would it make sense to send (admittedly inaccurate) mechanical copies of Earth creatures.

Animatronic creatures are also not supposed to be accurate, beyond the obvious visual element... they're just supposed to look cool, while having nothing in common with real creatures under the skin. Not useful from a scientific point of view, but great if you want to impress grade-schoolers.

Bringing data about Earth creatures would be so much easier, more practical and (because they can contain more than a robot-simulator could ever tell them) more accurate representations of Earth creatures.

In answer to part of your original post, SLJ. And to pick up on something you said a couple of posts ago.

One thing I'm not sure that has been explored much (I may well be wrong) is non-verbal communication between robots and humans. My daughter has Asperger's (a form of autism) and has a lot of trouble with understanding both the importance of her own body language (she finds it very hard, as many autistic people do, to make eye contact with someone for more than a moment) and understanding other people's body language. Many social rules just 'don't make sense' to autistic people. Take meal times for example. Aged ten she still doesn't get why people don't eat with their fingers, need to talk about inconsequential trivia over a meal, or stay at the table for a second longer after they have finished eating. (I know this is true of a lot of modern families but in our house we eat sitting round a table and talking. No books. No phones. No TV in the room. Very old-fashioned, but important to us.)

Even though I have been living with her and her autism for 10 years I find it frustrating and hard when she doesn't look at me when we're talking. I've had a lot of practice; I'm very used to her not looking at me but it is so hard wired into most of us that it still causes confusion and frustration. We're teaching her (and she is learning) how to fake some obvious body language. She can now make 'significant moustache contact' with me for example. She looks towards the centre of my face as we talk. To me it appears as if she is looking at me (ie into my eyes) but she isn't. She's faking it. She doesn't truly understand why she is faking it but knows it makes me happier and more likely to respond positively to what she is saying.

It occurs to me that sentient robots would be in a similar position. Faking (programmed) to do all these odd things that, on the face of them make very little sense, but are vital to good communication between us fleshy types. The character Data for example in Star Trek: Whatever He's In shows some very autistic traits. Maybe autistic people would get on with robots better than most people - just as many Aspies seem to do well with computers now - and become 'interpreters' between us and them. I dunno. Just some thoughts.

One thing I'm not sure that has been explored much (I may well be wrong) is non-verbal communication between robots and humans. My daughter has Asperger's (a form of autism) and has a lot of trouble with understanding both the importance of her own body language (she finds it very hard, as many autistic people do, to make eye contact with someone for more than a moment) and understanding other people's body language. Many social rules just 'don't make sense' to autistic people. Take meal times for example. Aged ten she still doesn't get why people don't eat with their fingers, need to talk about inconsequential trivia over a meal, or stay at the table for a second longer after they have finished eating.

It occurs to me that sentient robots would be in a similar position. Faking (programmed) to do all these odd things that, on the face of them make very little sense, but are vital to good communication between us fleshy types. The character Data for example in Star Trek: Whatever He's In shows some very autistic traits. Maybe autistic people would get on with robots better than most people - just as many Aspies seem to do well with computers now - and become 'interpreters' between us and them. I dunno. Just some thoughts.

I once took one of the online Autism Spectrum Quotient tests after my OH suggested I may be autistic. If I am it's a very, very, very mild form but the test said I was closer to being autistic than I was to the national average. I don't understand the need for inconsequential trivia or like prolonged eye contact and I'm pretty good with machines (at least in comparison with most people I meet). Maybe JM has a point. Insert smiley with a grin.

I once took one of the online Autism Spectrum Quotient tests after my OH suggested I may be autistic. If I am it's a very, very, very mild form but the test said I was closer to being autistic than I was to the national average. I don't understand the need for inconsequential trivia or like prolonged eye contact and I'm pretty good with machines (at least in comparison with most people I meet). Maybe JM has a point. Insert smiley with a grin.

What if something is wrong with the NORMAL people and they drive the autistic people carzy?

It occurs to me that sentient robots would be in a similar position. Faking (programmed) to do all these odd things that, on the face of them make very little sense, but are vital to good communication between us fleshy types. The character Data for example in Star Trek: Whatever He's In shows some very autistic traits. Maybe autistic people would get on with robots better than most people - just as many Aspies seem to do well with computers now - and become 'interpreters' between us and them. I dunno. Just some thoughts.

Does he? Not being very familiar with autistic traits, I've obviously noted Data's predilection for looking mildly distracted (when multitasking) and not overtly showing emotion (because he doesn't have emotions equal to humans'... though it has been demonstrated that he does have some emotions of his own).

But it's a good point that Data was specifically programmed to behave in ways that would make him more "human-like" to other humans (even, as Dr. Bashir pointed out to him once, to the extent of simulating breathing). He's the embodiment of a visual solution to the Turing test... though, to be thorough, his creator could have given him a natural skin tone and eye color. But hey, it's television, and how better to show a bunch of TV watchers that a character is an android--aside from saying it or giving him an excuse to open his chest and plug something into it, every ten minutes--but giving him white skin and funky eyes... (TV exec Steve)

In fact, depictions of robots in TV and movies are so often given a heavy-handed orchestration, specifically, in order to apply one of the popular TV/movie tropes to it:

Make them look exactly like human in order to draw more attention to superhuman abilities;

Make them look mildly inhuman in order to draw more attention to human characteristics (Data's model);

Make them look really inhuman to make them look scarier/cuter/smarter/dumber;

Make them look like an animal to suggest specific animal traits; etc.

It tends to be handled as a visual "shortcut," demanded either by budgetary issues, storytelling limitations or the belief by the heads of production that the audience is too dense to "get" anything more sophisticated.

It's probably more common for books to follow these tropes than to ignore them, but an examination of that speculation might be interesting...